This blog is devoted to stuff that white people like

#21 Writer’s Workshops

It’s no secret. White people want to be writers. Why wouldn’t they? Work 10 hours a week from a country house in Maine or England. Get called a genius by other white people, and maybe get your book made into a film.

Every single white person harbors this dream. No matter what they tell you, all of them have at least one chapter of a novel stashed away somewhere.

Being a marginally crafty race, white people will often seek out every possible route to achieving this goal, and one of the most popular methods has been writers workshops.

These are expensive mini go-to-school type vacations. Where you talk with a published writer (often someone you haven’t heard of, but they have a book on Amazon) who will tell you how they became writers. If there is time, they will listen to you read your stuff and tell that you it’s good but it needs work on a) structure, b) characters, c) dialogue. Then they will collect their check and go back to their country house or studio apartment in New York.

Ah yes… the writer “poseurs”. Speaking as someone who actually makes a living as a writer (but not a novelist or anything like that) – these people tarnish the profession. It’s amazing how many people call themselves writers just because they can type on a keyboard or hold a pencil and make marks on paper. Good writing is a skill that takes time and practice to learn. Kudos to those who are truly devoted to improving their writing – but a lot of people take a course or a workshop and start thinking they are going to be the next Stephen King. That’s like thinking you were going to be the next Einstein after watching an episode of Nova.

This is kind of like black people all having a rap song tucked away, dreaming about not only robbing the liquor store but making MORE money off of writing a song about it. Double score! They all have this dream when they’re teens, you see them gathing in the weedy front lawn of the rented house rapping to each other about all the illegal activities they aren’t quite brave enough to commit yet. Ahh, the life, you can climb out of your shit hole neighborhood, (the one you spray painted just last week) and collect that check but in order to keep it real you decide to stay put in ‘hood, you know, for authenticity.

I wouldn’t say my dream is to become a full time writer, I enjoy writing for my own purposes. I can admit that none of my work is decent enough to be published into something amazing and I accept that.

I’d have to say people may also attend such workshops to gain the knowledge that wasn’t taught back when they were in school. As education has developed, students today recieve much of the information that is taught in these workshops- adults who have long since been in school attend these for a variety of reasons.

Of course, white people lament the poor quality of their education in “public schools” unless they did not go to a public school. Thus, through “continuing education,” “creative workshops” “spiritual healing” and “life-long learning” white people been able to overcome their inferior education and under-achiever past by getting together with “like-minded adults” drink tea and read Proust.

And, of course, they support educational system reform and “choice in schools” because, as white people, they can practice segregational racism but claim it is all in the name of quality choice in schools. Choice was something they did not get with their sweaty, overcrowded, spitball, inferior 50s and 60s education in public schools named after dead presidents.

This is true. I would really like to be a writer, but I’m practical and know I’ll never make it as that, so I’m going to study science next year. I have started writing a screenplay (perhaps worse than writing a novel) but I realize it is no good.

A good tip if you get stuck talking about a white person’s recent writer’s workshop: make sure you casually mention the word “craft.” People who go to writer’s workshops love to pretend that writing is like woodworking or something, and love to call it a “craft.” Suggested usage: “I’d kill to have the luxury to take a weekend and polish my craft.” Major white person points.

Ouch. This hits home. One of my best friends teaches in a W’shop. He’s published and won prizes. I admit to being averse to wkshops; it’s a bit of a racket. One wonders if Tolstoy or Dostoevsky or Melville would have happened if they attended such sessions. Oh well, easy targets, but i have to say that these programs and workshops have successfully tapped into many Americans’ appetite for fame and celebrity. But puh-lease, no more memoirs — a genre too many people are writing and, alas, reading.

All this crap describes liberal white people. Execpt, liberal white people never vote Repbulican. Liberial white people are Democracts and believe they know what is best for black people. The irony is Black people believe the liberal white people. Thereby the Democract party, the party of slavery, the KKK, “Jim Crow” and segration keep black people on their liberal plantation.

White people are VERY serious about their personal identities. Thusly, you get several comments on each post having to do with “I’m white, but I don’t like blah, blah” or this “ain’t” what I call white. Or they want to turn social satire into a platform for venting their spleen of political malaise.

Obviously not all white people can take a joke.

More on topic, if you’d like to read to the first chapter of my new novel, “Diddly doo Who are You?” here’s a link.

Don’t know about this one. I work with a chinese guy as my writing partner and do work shops with two of my best friends who are El Salvadorean. An work shop I go to there are people of all races there, so there you have it, EVERY RACE, NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE, HAS A DREAM OF BEING COMFORTABLE, IF YOU DON’T THEN WHY ARE YOU WRITING THIS?

For those other morons, who is to say that the author of this blog is black? So try not attacking other races because you feel as if this is a truth or something. Most of the stuff attributed here is actually a very small minority of white Americans. The majority of white americans I dare say don’t even read books much less want to be writers.

The graduate school I’m enrolled in included a week long writer’s workshop in the curriculum. But in my defense, at least I’m getting a teaching degree, so it results in a real job. However, 1 out of the 60 people in my ‘highly selective’ program is not white. Have no fear though, I’m their token gay!

I am part of a writing group, but the organizer doesn’t really care about paying dues ($5 every 6 months). I don’t think these are bad at all. Writers need a support network like everyone else. It helps you get your work out, plus you can get some valuable feedback. But if we’re talking about conferences with a $250 admission fee for a few hours, then that’s just stupid.

I’ve actually met and corresponded with published authors regarding my material for no charge.

However, I agree that people throw “writer” around a little too loosely. I actually hate it when people call me that because I haven’t published anything yet. I always correct them by throwing in “aspiring” in front of it so they understand the difference.

But this is an age when people can paint themselves as experts on any subject after taking an online course or reading a book.

This post is so true, especially for women who are in their middle years. My mother’s generation reacted to the empty nest syndrome by acquiring real estate licenses. Women from my generation take up writing workshops where they blog endlessly about the act of writing. You know, following their bliss and all.

#31, this is soooo true! And I am so bloody sick of it all. I love the “empty nest” syndrome mythology. That’s definitely a white thing. Hasn’t Oprah done a show on it yet? If she hasn’t, then it isn’t allowed.

The worst part of it is that these are the same women who pushedpushedpushed-shovedshovedshoved their way through their careers and kids and “having it all” looking down at every woman who wasn’t making $$$ married to a stockbroker/dr./lawyer. Now they obsess over their bodies and their “creativity”. PS: I took a writer’s workshop last spring. I am actually a good writer. And white and old, too.

Garbarrassing. Good stuff–I like that phrase a lot! 🙂 So fitting for so many things….

I guess I’ve just never understood why, in the guise of humour, people feel the need to cut people down.

Even if an individual thinks he/she has recognized what they feel are stereotypes–why is it so funny, so cool, to ridicule? People crave community and belonging; it’s not new. We like to do things other people do (like visit odd blogs and post to them, showing either our hip “in your face, yeah!” nerve, or our self-righteous indignation, or our whatever…).

So you hate writing workshops. Then maybe just don’t go?

Offended by wannabe writers–Well, isn’t that how all the greats started out? Labelled as deluded-do-nothings that we now laud as genius?

How (WHY?) do we criticize people for exploring their potential (and maybe, gasp, having some fun)?

The Empty-nest myth–perhaps it’s an unrelatable-to concept for some, but why is it so unfathomable that different people experience things _differently_. Big changes of any kind are bound to leave some confusion and muddling about time–If you’ve dedicated a long time for caring for your family, you suddenly have some serious hours available for introspection when they move out. Apparently a similar feeling of “What now?” hits individuals who’ve cared for a dying loved one for a long time.

And the Mac comment–the suppositions surrounding what type of person uses what kind of computer are so weird! Eliticism thrives everywhere.

There is so much hate in the world–What’s funny about it? I laugh at things that point out the flaws in me in a way that makes me want to change, not hide in a closet and cower.

What perhaps was either not communicated well or that you did not understand was the cultural stereotype of “Empty Nest Syndrome.” Women who have judged other women for not having kids, for example, or leading a life other than that mythically known and universally respected (in the US “white” suburban culture) “Soccer Mom” stereotype are the first to scream that they suffer from “Empy Nest Syndrome.”

It’s just another in a long-line of experiences that we may all experience (yes, regardless of race or gender or religion) at many points in our lives, that has been co-opted by the “majority” (ie., rich/white/breeders) as the only time one can feel/experience anything like this–like loss, for example. I do personally appreciate your understanding that one could also experience this perhaps after losing a loved one. Loss and/or re-evaluating of one’s life after loss of any kind is a human thing to do. One can even re-evaluate one’s life without the socially acceptable prompt (divorce! empty nest! infertility!) It’s the taboo in our society that makes the act done merely for the sake of the humaness of it that irritates and lessens those who have no cultural stereotype which to hide behind.

Empty Nest is only ONE way, not the only way to do re-evaluate. And those empty-nesters should have a little understanding about others, which they usually don’t (isn’t that a “white” thing?: “I’m the only person who feels this way, and you can’t feel this way unless your three kids have been accepted at Ivy League universities far from home. Waaahhhh. Now what do I do with my life?)

Eileen, I believe you’ve missed the point; the poster does not hate writers’ workshops. This whole blog criticizes people who get superficially involved in “culture” so that they can feel superior to others (which they would hotly deny, I’m sure). Social criticism of this kind is indeed valuable; if it wasn’t, would Swift’s Modest Proposal be a staple of American curricula? I mean really, the man suggested eating babies.

Somewhat Old and White Woman: I just sometimes think everyone’s so quick to feel judged by others that they too quickly lump people together into stereotyped groups. Not every soccer mom is well, you know, a _soccer mom_ (and I’m not trying to do a whole “poor misunderstood rich white people thing”). I try to cut people breaks, because I find it hard to ever be the person I wish I was. Maybe I was just tired today. I get that way sometimes.

>>>And those empty-nesters should have a little understanding about others, which they usually don’t<<<

Absolutely.

Nicole: No, I get the whole point re: “This whole blog criticizes people who get superficially involved in “culture” so that they can feel superior to others,” and you are absolutely right about social criticism being valuable.

I guess I just don’t know if a blog entry like this isn’t just crossing over and becoming what it supposedly rails against–its own form of feeling superior. But that very well could be my own issue. I appreciate that people will view this type of humour very differently.

[…] course, the fun of Stuff White People Like is self-recognition. For example, #21 on the hit parade: Writer’s Workshops. It’s no secret. White people want to be writers. Why wouldn’t they? Work 10 hours a week from a […]

As a professional writer/editor with a master’s degree in writing fiction, I’ve attended a number of workshops. None of them were “vacations,” mini or otherwise. Nor were they avenues to getting published. That requires talent and/or connections in the publishing world. The point of attending is to hone one’s skills under the guidance of a master. As for the instructors, I was fortunate enough to study with some well-known writers, including the 1993 Pulitzer winner.

My advice to people who are serious about writing (white or otherwise), and believe they could benefit from a workshop, is this: Do some research on the instructor(s). If you’re not excited by THEIR writing, you’re wasting your time, even if the workshop is in Hawaii. They have nothing to offer you.

Wait, 10 hours a week is going to let someone make it as a writer? Hell no.

Writing, good, sellable writing is a job just like any other. Most novels get a $5,000 advance IF THAT, after you spend over a year writing it between working a job to pay the bills, if you’re dedicated. That $5,000 advance came from well over 1,000 hours of work.

Anyone that thinks they can be a professional writer of any sort in 10 hours a week is deluding themselves. The only people that can sustain themselves on 10 hours of work a week are $200/hour whores, or the corporate elite.

I am amazed that people are getting angry over these posts. They poke fun at white people and they are funny. We all need to laugh at ourselves sometimes. I never read any malice or cruel intent. Its not 100% true of most people, but there are characteristics that are true and that makes it funny, to me. And yes, I am white and I do write for a living.

As an MFA/Fiction white chick with a lot of friends who’ve done or are currently doing the MFA thing, I did get a chuckle out of this piece. That said, I appreciate everyone’s comments, particularly Eileen’s, about writing workshops not being a vacation and the relative luxury of being able to take the opportunity to get an MFA.

An MFA program of any stripe isn’t a walk in the park. It’s very hard work, and I’ve found writing especially lonely (I also act! Yipe! But I don’t have any sort of degree in that). It’s you, your thoughts, and your computer/notebook/Selectric. You aren’t buttressed by your fellow cast members or your director. You can learn to create the environment that will support you and your fellow writers to learn and grow, but it’s not built-in. And if you end up in a particularly nasty, cutthroat program with instructors who exploit the star system, who prize ass-kissing over talent and dedication, and who constantly reiterate that you’re there to write a particular type of fiction (usually “literary”, whatever that means, and it’s different for every race/color/creed/sex/ethnic group) instead of one in which the professors are interested in helping you develop who you are as a writer, it can be a devastating experience.

All things being relative, though, in a country in which a far-from-negligible slice of the population (mostly Black and Latino) is lucky to graduate high school, much less get a master’s degree in a not-specifically-career oriented field, it is truly a privilege to be able to do the MFA thing, even if you had a shitty time of it. And I think, in part, that huge disparity lends credence to the misconception that an arts degree is some kind of navel-gazing exercise, not that those of us who consider ourselves artists aren’t prone to some hardcore cases of that. Of course, the prevailing American attitude of “go to college so you can get a high-paying job” (for whites, “model minorities”, and Blacks and Latinos of Certain Income Levels) is a strong corrosive.

Writers’ workshops are the bomb! Here’s the hitch, you guys: almost every single workshop offers funding for people who can write. So many of them don’t make you pay a dime if they think you’re good. Many will also feed you. One has done my laundry.

So if they don’t give you funding to attend, the message should be loud and clear: go back to your regular life, or go back to the writing desk. When you’re funded to attend, agents will pay more attention to you, as will the instructors, and it will be worth it to be there. I’ve seen too many people, white or not, drop 2 grand for the opportunity for 15 people to read their story, cough politely, and give gentle feedback so as not to hurt the feelings of someone who’s just paid 2 grand to be there.

And every writer in the history of writing has had a community, textual, worldly, or otherwise.

Fricking Shakespeare had his own writers’ community. Of course then, we called them “contemporaries.” If you think these guys weren’t reading each others work, you are sorely mistaken.

The bottom line is: go writers! Do it however, whenever you can! Just don’t give up. Ever.

Black people all want to be rappers or hip-hop promoters. Asian people all want to be doctors or pharmacists. I don’t know about Latinos. Any Latinos out there help on this one. Maybe it’s owning a landscaping company and employing whites.

I found out the hard way that people are very dishonest in this field or career. There is nothing more annoying when you cannot even write a diary without someone snooping.
What is there to say that hasn’t been said before? When you do write well, it gets taken from you no matter what you do. A fly in the ointment kind of scenerio. Bad asses from Chicago or the fly boys from Arizona but there are people who are not going to let you have a day off from the hell on earth reality.

Excuse this computer glich. Something is wrong with it not me. Takes my paragraphs and plays with it like that. So, the world is like that too. I agree with the Beatles, everybody is fucked up. The top dog syndrome and who really cares?

As a white, freelance journalist/copywriter I don’t understand the writer’s workshop. And I’ve never attended one because they are expensive.

Hemingway said that the writing life is a lonely life and that getting around people to generate ideas was worthless and could actually hurt your “craft.” I agree with him because when I try to do anything for a class it just doesn’t turn out right.

I did attend a writing class after graduation and the teacher’s methods were so “controversial” (according to him) …he made us dance in class. “Just free your body, go with your own flow, and then your mind will be free.”
White writers, dancing in a class. Yeah, I never went back.

The instructor was a Harvard graduate and worked at U-Haul. He was one of those underachievers that liked to “be with the people.”

You should write about the MFA. I know a couple people with them and they work at the same place as me, making 15 an hour.

Of course, all “writers” get offended by this post and have to write about how they are soooo not like that, and sooo much more hip, and soooo not an old gray haired, dumpy lady waiting for a gray, pony tailed man.

wow, guys, don’t you see that this is funny? i’m white and a writer (journalist) and this shouldn’t be offensive AT ALL, it’s just witty and funny like when Dave Chappelle or Chris Rock make jokes about black people, IT’S JUST JOKES get over yourselves

No. Shit dude, that happened to a friend of mine. Watched Nova special and like a week later wrote a dissertation on the application of nutonion mechanics to the reverse engineering of astrol decompressions. And now he’s famous. for real.

I don’t understand why so many comments, like JENN’s, stoop to petty racism. What is there to get offended about here? Are you people so insecure that you will descend to parodying African Americans and other races, but particularly blacks? The assumption that the authors of this site are black and not Asian or Latin or brown is interesting, as though they are the natural opposition to whites who would of course say things like this. Even if the authors are black, they’re not really being racist here. They’re not, for example, listing “Colonialism” or something controversial like that in their blog–water bottles and writers workshops and expensive sandwiches are not the stuff of true dissension and hardly merits the undermining of an entire group of people. What the hell is wrong with you?

I don’t understand why so many comments, like JENN’s, stoop to petty racism. What is there to get offended about here? Are you people so insecure that you will descend to parodying African Americans and other races, but particularly blacks? The assumption that the authors of this site are black and not Asian or Latin or brown is interesting, as though they are the natural opposition to whites who would of course say things like this. Even if the authors are black, they’re not really being racist here. They’re not, for example, listing “Colonialism” or something controversial like that in their blog–water bottles and writers workshops and expensive sandwiches are not the stuff of true dissension and hardly merits the undermining of an entire group of people. What the hell is wrong with you?

yea, i notied this blog doesn’t mention the equally easy target–REDNEKS. i live in the south, i have to deal with them every day. i honestly have no idea why they an be so proud of their rednekness. redneks would hat most of the stuf on this blog even though they are VERY white.

This comment blog has been an interesting read. Some reverse racism objectors who’ve posted here are definitely guilty of racism themselves. But that does not mean the accusation itself is groundless. This site can make simple changes to make sure that nobody can accuse them of being racist. All it takes is to put “white” inside quotation marks. I was referred to this site by my wife who is Indian and found herself “guilty” of certain preferences described here. She joked that she was more white that she thought. What is being made fun of on this site is a certain set of behaviors which have nothing to do with one’s ethnic origins or skin pigmentation and yet which we all somehow think of as “white.” But (and this is the subtle and crucialdifference) it is this kind of thinking (racial stereotyping) that should be exposed and made fun of, not the behaviors themselves.

Sarahm: You are so right on. As another writer, this is one of my pet peeves. There’s a very funny book by a woman whose name now evades me, she also wrote The First Wives Club; this other book is The Bestseller, and it’s a great spoof on writers. My favorite part that I’ll remember forever is the character based on Jacqueline Susann who throws a hissy fit because everyone wants to write a book. She wonders why they all have to horn in on her territory, when, after all, she doesn’t try to do brain surgery, or to paint murals or whatever. It’s really quite hilarious.

I’m fairly certain the bloggers of this site are two white guys, and that the spirit of this whole thing is to gently poke fun at themselves and their own social mileu. Obviously, they’re describing middle to upper-middle-class hip urban people, who might sometimes be of other races–though it is certainly white people, the people with power in our culture, who set the trends. In any case, some of the comments are far too serious, and some of the commenters have absolutely no sense of humor–or maybe just not the bloggers’ sense of humor.

…this is ALMOST like those black people having rap songs tucked away — those sordid raconteurs, with their chintzy dreams, and poorly rhymed schemes — and almost as funny.

But what isn’t funny is your thinly veiled hostility.
Did the blog hit to close to home? Have you had one too many bad run-ins with black persons, or are you merely pontificating, having watched a little too much of “The Wire?”

Bananafish, yes, the thing with this blog is the ambiguity. I can’t be sure, but I assumed all the time this is just one white person’s brillant joke. Is it irony? (Something white people like). I’m no joke expert, but never heard a black a Jewish comedian make lines like this.

Your post, which betrays little in the way of creative daring or potential success does a good job of reversing any intended irony, and, if was intended as compelling defense fo the worthiness of writing workshops, I feel validated in never having attended any. Sheesh?

I am white and I assumed that this blog was started by a white person because it is usually only considered OK to make fun of your own race, i.e. comdians like George Lopez make fun of Latinos, Chris Rock makes jokes about white people. Of course they also make jokes about white people but I think most white people consider that acceptable as long as the comedian also makes fun of his own race. People need to be able to laugh at themselves and to talk openly about race.

I’ve been a published writer since I was 20, but I didnt get into the literary fiction circles until my late 40s. While attending MFA school and getting one in fiction writing, I ended up attending two writers conferences, that’s all even though I was around a program that offered them for about 20 years. I found that they were only of use to people who knew nothing about writing, and of course people who get paid to present them or at them. Most of what is useful at thse conferences could be learned cheaper by buying an introductory college creative writing textbook.

However, for the people involved with them writers being paid to present them and professors whose programs present them besides the cash, they seem to be mainly oriented for the sexual opportunities. In one program I was involved in a number of us protested that for years it took place a full day’s drive from the university that sponsored it in an inaccessible area where airfare from where the college cost more than a flight to Europe. Of course, insiders knew the head of the department used the program to organize his seductions of various ladies who attended the conference, you know the type that have always been wanting to write, but lack the time because they must honor their tennis dates!

If you are a real published writer or have a degree’s worth of writing education, these conferences can be worth it solely for the sexual opportunities. Despite having a lot of wild and liberated friends and more than 100 lovers, the two writers conferences I attended are the only places I have participated in threesomes and foursomes or where I have seen friends who have been otherwise chaste married women screw around.

One crowning example of this is a dear friend of mine who was saddled with an unspeakably obnoxious wife, you know the kind of marriage where only someone SO nice could tolerate someone so AWFUL like her. Finally, the wife decided that she was a writer. The husband then encouraged her to go to as many writer’s conferences as she could. It took him nine months before she found a boy friend and sought a divorce. It is thirty years after that fact and neither she nor her boyfriend have published a word.

For Black people–which I am–writers conferences are real instances of being with white people when they act like we are not there even if there are the token black person there either as a writer or on the faculty. Be very careful. Be warned that because of that these conferences are useless in discussing realities of a novel set among people who are not white or people who are not middle, upper middle class, or declasse bohemians from those classes temporarily taking an “artistic” break from reality.

If you are serious about writing, take creative writing courses at a college or university, join a writers group that admit only after submitting material that shows what level you are on.

As being seen as writer, no matter what else I have done, for about 45 years (even in junior high school), the most annoying thing is the friend, coworker, relative, or general smuck who descends upon you who explain to you that they too plan to be a writer and make money once they retire, or once they do something.

When you tell them that to get anywhere in either non fiction, free lance writing, tech writing, fiction, poetry, editing or even proof reading, they have years of work ahead of them and that like any profession you just dont do it by desire but work, they turn on you like vipers.

writers workshops are pretty much a social activity for middle class white people where writing is a sport rather than an art or a profession. Exchanging writing is only useful when it is done based on a common understanding of technique and the principles of whatever genre is done and of mutual knowledge of how each writer develops her or his own work. Like AA and other parts of the 12-step religion they are general ego boosting places for men who like to talk (me being a man who likes to talk).

Generally, the best way to work is to work either with an experienced agent or editor or another writer who knows how you develop a work and follows the same approach to technique that you share. Interchange on that can be useful.

When I was in grad school I participated in an open workshop a professor held on campus. In the workshop people who never had or would publish a word in the weekly reader would get into nauseating diatribes about the faults of the beginning of stories that I would win prizes for and would be well published. With my own knowledge I wasted my time explainign things about bad and unserious writing that was a waste of my time and that of those who write it.

Writers workshops may be social fun if you fit into the social group that is dominant there, but are not that useful if you want to become a well-published writer.

People want to be writers, few of these people want to write. Fewer of them want to do the hard work that it takes to become a good writer which means study of grammar, rhetoric, usage, compositional and dramatic theory as well as the business of it all. This is hard work.

Just like any professional people who get someplace real have worked hard all of their lives to develop the skill that they express. No one says I want to be an accountant, I want to be a doctor, I want to be a physicist, and goes out to a workshop with other wannabes to become that. No they realize that it takes dedication and also submitting to the real writers life which is one that brings very little company or noteriety.

Most informal writers workshops are overflowing with people who want to pat each other on the back as being writers without any recognition of realities. It is like calling myself an opera singer because I sing along with parts of my 3 tenors CD when I play it.

Serious writers never speak or worry or talk about “creativity.” In 41 years as a published writer or in the 10-15 years since I began to publish literary fiction and poetry, in creative writing classes with great teachers and students who went on to win national prizes, write top ten best sellers, and teach at important universities, in working on manuscripts that friends published for six figures, in teaching writing part time at a university part time for ten years, I have never heard any serious writer or writing teacher talk about creativity.

The writers workshop phenonem is part of the way that art is mystified in this society. No one recognizes the importance of just surviving in this society, let alone working a job, supporting a family, raising children, or just keeping sane!

Instead, people feel there is something wrong with their lives. They feel they can redeem their worth or feel worthier than other people by becoming a writer and being recognized for their creativity.

This is total crap. I have known writers all my life including Poet Laureates, writers of wonderful books of all kinds, and writers are just as bad or good, stupid and shitty, evil, and selfish as plumbers, accountants, football players, mechanics, bus drivers, or any other group of people. The same with musicians, the other passion of my life.

Success in writing comes from working HARD at it, not from being a hobbiest who now proclaims their creativity because they go to a “workshop” with other wannabes.

I don’t take anyone who has never been published seriously.

I might take the same person more seriously if they were a mother, a person who has supported their family, ran a home, or anything else that they have to be. Writers I take seriously about writing, but they are just as bad, good, worthless, or wonderful as anybody else.

Right on. No one hates the infestation of such people around writing as much as serious writers. It really is an example of the denigration of life in general and people in general. It is also insulting to the great majority of published writers in all genre who have worked their butts off to get where they are. It also puts up a thicket of dilettantes who are in the way of serious, talented people who come around the writing scene.

Most of all it is kind of sad. Writing life is a life of being very busy doing something that you must do alone for most of the time, an occupation that pays very little even at the top. At the time the Color Purple was published, I was an acquaintance of the author and a collaborator and a coauthor with her companion of the time. My knowledge of how many years it took her to write this Masterpiece (the book is greatness besides the essential trashiness of the movie. If taught a novel course either as literature or how to write one, I might use that as a text) led me to figure out that if she had worked at McDonalds for the time, she would have made a similar figure.

When you write, you look forward to the time that you can be out with your friends and family, go to the beach, see a movie, or read a book that is not part of your writing work or watch television, or just sit in a chair, stare at the wall, and drool.

The site of people wasting time in these writers workshops when they could be enjoying their lives otherwise and not feeling bad for what they have done in life hurts!

This is well said. If you have a first novel, nowadays you have to essentially present a marketing plan that works to get it published. In any kind of genre fiction they want you to have another book just as good ready in a year. You can spend a lifetime getting material and crafting a first novel, but you writing another book in a year is a struggle, unless your book hits as a best seller which rarely happens with a first novel. Then you might write a piece of crap that gets sold anyway because of your name.

If you are on the five-thousand advance level or less, they are going to want you to promote the book very much on your own dime. One writer of dectective fiction I know got asked to drive all around the state of Florida doing book readings etc on her own cash, taking off from her job etc. And she hit with a major publisher.

Most people in writers’ workshops aim to write literary fiction, a genre where very few books are published and very few books even break even and only a small group of people can make a living out of it. The main road to being able to support oneself in lit fiction is having a book or two enables you to get into the racket by adjuncting or joining the staff of MFA programs or getting in on the writers’ workshop gigs.

Worse, lots of folks in these workshops and MFA programs are oriented to people writing short stories. That is because their size is good for teaching writing. Of course, no one in this country makes a living from selling shorts stories. Even the best short stories end up in literary magazines whose circulation numbers in the hundreds which pay in extra copies or at most a couple hundred bucks.

The problem is to really write, you need 40-50 hours a week or more to really make money. The key thing is finding a way to survive while work to get to that position

I’ve had an MFA for a decade. In my address book is a section chiefly composed of people I went to school with which has a list of about 30 people who have MFA’s. While a couple of them are now outstandingly published writers, one has been on the best seller list about 10 times, has written feature films and been asked to write scrips for the Wire (which has its own position on this list), most of these people are not doing anything involved with writing. Of those who were successful, most were already publishing when they got into grad school. The most successful one mentioned above quit school and had a publishing career though he came back submitting an already published book as his thesis.

I recommend people taking a serious MFA program, especially if it is directed by professors who have actually made enough to support themselves as writers in the real world. It is hard work. It has the advantage of putting you a supportive environment which is the most important thing for nurturing any skill or art.

On the other hand, like most graduate programs in English and literary studies, the glut of MFA programs has happened because universities seek hordes of MFA student graduate students to teach English courses at slave labor wages instead of hiring professors. This is pretty much the judgment of the industry and for the past decade the graduate section of the MLA has been in favor of cutting down all English graduate programs because they have been based on educating people for positions that do not exist in order for colleges to exploit the graduate students.

This is part of the massive attack on the college teaching profession that college management has succeeded in by and large.

People get recruited to MFA programs based on the idea that with the degree they can teach at a college or university and support their writing, not that they can make the big time as a writer. Out of the thirty people on that pag ein my address book, only two people with MFAs [not counting grad asssitants or slave labor part timers like myself]are teaching who were not already teaching at a college. One of those two won several of the top national poetry prizes for his second book which came out before he received his MFA. The other was a prominent local television personality, entertainer, and local Black history maven, who parlayed that more than her MFA to a position at a college.

Now, even though after getting the degree my interest went more toward playing and writing about and researching about music than writing, the experience of working for that degree was a great school of writing. I learned a lot even though I had been published in non-fiction for a couple decades before I took it and there were actually courses at the university I went to that used my publications as textbooks.

No writers workshops I know of pay anyone except professors or presenting writers. Few pay them. In graduate programs graduate students who become graduate assistants and teaching assistants get free tuition and sometimes housing in exchange for teaching or doing work for professors that a person being paid to do it would receive 30-40 thousand dollars. They are usually given less than minimum wage and no benefits other than access to the standard student health insurance plan.

The real problem in writing is to be able to survive until you can make enough money in the trade to support yourself. It takes money to educate yourself, it takes money to support yourself while you learn to write. Ifyou are young and your parents are rich or other things it can help.

One person I went to school with and who has had a successful publishing career quit her job as an assistant district attorney and became a union carpenter when she launched her writing career and MFA program. As a carpenter she could make enough money to pay for school, the support of her daughter, and have a flex schedule to devote time to writing and school. Another person, who ultimately returned to teaching at the community college he had been teaching at BEFORE he went to MFA school, was able to make enough cash to support himself and his children by working as a rip off used car salesman, a trade he knew well. There is one writer I know who was able to make his way through school and do very well playing high stakes poker. In fact, he gave up trying to get published, and just became a poker player, though he made and continues to make huge contributions to the school’s scholarship fund.

There are other people I know who were able to do this by having parents who are both dead and bankers, as well as a contigent of wives of doctors and lawyers, some of whom did significant writers.

Poor people and minorities tend not to participate in these programs because they are expensive, writing does not lead to renumeration, and also because a certain class and kind of white person dominates them that they can feel uncomfortable in writing programs or workshops. They are more likely to move toward acacdemic and job preparation for things that pay. Writing doesn’t

As a middle class grows, no doubt more Black folk will follow white folk into this, especially as there has been an immense exploision in Black book publishing especially in popular fiction and a similar explosion in Black book clubs that involve thousands and thousand of members.

An immense part of serious writing workshop is talking about the reality of what people will do in the situations you put them in a piece of fiction. Being the only Black or hispanic person, or even the only person from a working class, farming, or immigrant background puts you at serious disadvantage in an all white, completely middle or upper class writing program especially given that the professors are usually drawn from the same social layer as the students.

At one point in my MFA classes, I knew no one in the program I was in who paid their own rent! That is it was populated by children supported by their parents even in their thirties or forties, wives of professionals, and what we called trust fund hippies.

It was hard writing the stories that I wrote which were about working class Black and white persons. One of my favorites was a story taken almost directly from life about a Black Korean war vet who was masquarading as literate but was illiterate but held a union job with benefit and retirement that paid about the equivalent of 2008 50K a year in the parts department of the local transit agency. The character was desperately fighting to hold onto his job in the face of computerization. Several students and the professor asked, “Why would he want to hold onto that job. Who would want it” !!!!!!

But I am sure some day there will be enough middle class Blacks and Hispanics to fit into this setup.

Amen. Everything you say is true. I make 22 bucks on hour at a transit agency and 1900 a course teaching as an adjunct at the Community college. I will be able to retire at 62 with a good pension.

As I have pointed out the MFA programs are very much a racket for the colleges to get TAs. They are a good place to learn fiction writing, poetry, and in some programs film writing. But these are fields that by and large don’t lead to renumeration. MFA programs don’t lead to teaching positions the way they did 20-30 40 years ago because there are hundreds of such programs all over the country and the competition is unreal and the starter jobs that once got you in the profession are taken up by MFA student TAS and MFA graduates working as adjuncts. Evwen this is going away, as colleges are setting up business writing and composition departments and hiring people with MAs and PHDs in these fields to teach comp and not poets, fiction writers, and screen writers.

I advised several young people I know contemplating MFA programs to take something that leads to sure employment as a minor like ESOL teaching, electronic tech work, etc. Like I say one of the most succcessful people I went to school with financially got into playing high stakes poker to get through school and made so much money that he quit school and makes more as a poker player than he did as an attorney and real estate agent!

Free lance writing is a real struggle too, but that is away from all this BS

Any working journalist would break out into laughter at the pretensious crap that people in the mostly amateur writing work shops get into or at the summer camps for middle age persons the big writers conferences are.

The hard grind of journalism is probably the best way to learn to write there is. Unfortunately for all the “creative” spirits, it takes work, requires qualifications, and is not at all glamorous, but then neither is serious literary fiction writing or poetry. You will find that authors (those of us who get published instead of talk about writing) are always talking about which local journalist they adore.

Don’t you hate it when writers use the word Kudos? I know I do. Another writer cliche is to list two things and then refer to them as the latter and the former. So anoying. Nice use of a hyphen though.

Who wouldn’t want a story of thiers made into a movie? It’s like saying we all want to be pro athletes when we grow up–of course most of us would be one if we had the talent/skill at our favorite sport.

I am currently in the South too and Rednecks make racist jokes around me because they don’t know I’m not white, its like being on the inside and finding out what white racists say when nonwhites leave the room. Whites in the South really don’t like rednecks though. They give everyone a bad name.

Oh dear. You’ve tipped our hand on writer’s workshops and MFAs–Amway for white people with pretensions. You put in your money, move a few rungs up, then pull in some more people to pay your way. As long as there’s a supply of folks at the bottom of the pyramid, it works. But it keeps us white people from causing trouble, and plus: affairs–and, and threesomes! What’s not to like?

Judging from some of your posts,
you must only know upper middle-class,
well-educated white people. And assuming
you’re of a darker persuasion, that’s just
as well, because that’s where you’ll
find the most folks who’ll tolerate you.

Is this a pointless weak jab or what. Duh! This is some funny S@$%! I am african american and this is something I like too. We have a writer’s club (majority black writer’s club) that meets once a month and share ideas with each other. we do all this corny stuff, also the threesomes (not really). It’s cool and cheaper than a therapist. Hey, maybe that’s why white people live longer. Humm!

We all have a book in us, its just boils down to which book to write, banging your first piece or a screwed up attempt at college (2 times). Maybe writing about 24 hours of the worst time you spent alive.

The funny part is that I was turned on to writer’s clubs by my white friends. It was cool and theraputic. We got an opportunity to explore all the crazt S@$% we thought would make a good book. hey, you can’t just casually have these conversations with some of your idiot and metally needy friends or family.

So, get the %$#@ off white people on this one. let’s take the concept and pass it around. Who knows maybe we can get better movies.

This is my favorite one. It’s so true that EVERY SINGLE WHITE PERSON wants to be a writer. Fortunately most of them are too lazy to do anything about it, and most of those who do are finally told how crappy their writing, ideas, and stories are.

Being a white person, I too want to write. HOWEVER, unlike 99% of these idiots, I actually have some skill at it, but I am self-aware enough to realize that I should take classes BEFORE writing my magnum opus.

Sorry to go on a rant, but this is like OCD. Every white person thinks they have it, but really, it’s only a select few like myself.

Um, this is kind of fun, but…
I checked the List carefully and couldn’t find any of the following items. Without these addenda, the list looks suspicously like “Stuff White Liberals Like That Make White Conservatives Feel Uncool.”

I would bet good money that you actually suck dick at writing and that you know this deep down. The only reason you’re posting this is that you’re attempting to prove your worth to yourself by posting about your “writing skill.”
tl;dr suck a dick and die.

I know its hard to imagine, what with America and Eastern Europe being the only homeland for whites these days, but whites have homelands. I know it may seem amazing, but the race that took us out of straw huts and glorified straw huts for the emperors of the world does like to have a homeland and congregate with other whites like every other race likes to congregate with its own. Who knew eh?

I don’t know how you are doing this.
Its like you’re seeing an X-ray beam into the very nature of my soul.
Its scary.
As melanin most likely blocks his psychic energies,this man clearly has the ability to read the minds of white people.

Oh My God!!! You mean there are workshops with only WHITE writers? Nobody told me. Am I missing something? Are Keinisha and Hannibal and Tony (yes, you can have the name Tony and not be “white”) supposed to be going somewhere else? And where we don’t have to work? I’d love to not work. I especially like that 10 hours a week. THAT’S what’s wrong – 10 hour days are killing my books.

Yeah, somebody told me there was funny stuff on here, but I think they just were just racist enough to assume it would make me feel good as a black person to laugh at white peoples’ expense. Nope. This whole website is kinda stupid. It’s just a list of stuff everybody likes(if they have access to it). It’s a lame and insecure log of self-deprecating punch lines that most-likely catalog the insecurities of its oh-so-self-aware and enlightened editors. I can see appeal only for other shame-filled white people who justify their inherited guilt by denouncing (but not renouncing) their legitimate cultural identifiers. According to this logic no racial group can ever develop new pastimes,tastes, or trends without the risk of seeming out of touch with every other race.

I think this is more about making fun of pretentious a-holes, especially those in their 20s. Once you hit 30 and start to realize how the world really works, all shame goes at the window. Of course you have properly noted the irony of self-deprecation, as a whole. Good work

Michael on August 16, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Sorry, that’s how I get through life. At work, in school and with other people. More of a Californian thing, if I wasn’t in the state of Cal. I wouldn’t be required to, then I’m one of those autistic nerds or something tries to get by in life. I’m a product of my own environment, middle-class people get down on their luck and have to face reality. I share this guy’s sarcastic sense of humor on how he perceives the world through a “white man’s” comical point of view. +

See autism boy, I can dig up alot more on your dumb ass if you continue with this race shit that you started.

I’m cynical about writer’s workshops. I did go to a class once, and the teacher said she was six years into writing her novel. Six years!!! And she’s teaching the class… Six years!!! This better be some magnum opus work of art. Six years!!!

I’ll probably go to a workshop one day, but I’ll be cynical then too. If I read something and the teacher blasts me for structure, character, dialogue…I’ll probably tell her I thought her book sucks too.

That’s how I was feeling during my creative writing class. We study “contemporary writers” (aka: guys who teach creative writing at a university and whore their books to other creative writing teachers who claim the book is “brilliant”) and have to buy their books, even though they’re probably going to go back to the school store or sold online after the course is over. They also shun writing “commercial” fiction (aka: stuff that makes money). No one ever mentions that Mark Twain and Charles Dickens wrote for the sole purpose of entertainment and money.

I love you so much.. I will never take anything I do seriously again! That is a great weight off this white girls shoulders… (p.s. #132 should be feeling superior when one of the items on the list doesn’t pertain to them…)

[…] 1, 2010 by Scott W. I am a white person through and through, but I am serious when I say I do not have a first chapter in the bottom of my closet. I do however like picking up the Moleskine notebooks at Barnes & […]

White people, well all people, also enjoy http://www.NakedHipster.com. Mainly because the girls are hot and don’t have clothes on. Usually those two things go well together. You know, the hotness and the nakedness.
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If this might be expensive, 1 way or an additional, the money to pay for this journey will be found.
Think yin-yang, light and dark, pepper and salt. But
don’t just speak about it; get out and make something occur.